Our museums are looking forward to welcoming you back from the end of April!

Learning through play is a key feature of our museums. We invite you to explore our play and learn areas online to inspire you to visit in person. Whether you're visiting with family or school, our sites have plenty of opportunities to play & learn!

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Dressing up!

Use the museum's supply of costumes to dress up as a fisherlad or fisherlass. 

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Periscope

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained, including our periscope game!

Museum of Scottish Railways
Museum Building 2

Sort the Mail

Sort the post in the mail coach.  Every one that ends up in the wrong box will take an extra day to arrive.

HMS Unicorn

Picture Hunt Quiz

Have a hunt around HMS Unicorn and see if you can spot these objects hiding around the ship. Tick them off as you go and you'll get a special reward if you find them all!

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Canal and Railway Interactive

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained! You can see if you can beat the top scorer on our canal and railways interactive!

Discovery Point

Men of Discovery interactive

Touch screen interactive about the expedition journey, its crew and their clothing. Includes fun dressing up and sledging games.

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Dressing Up

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained, including dressing up!

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Block and Tackle

Use a fishing boat's pulley system to lift heavy sandbags with ease. 

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Blast Your Own Iron

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained! You can have a go creating your own pig iron in a striking recreated blast furnace!

Scottish Maritime Museum
Dumbarton

Test hull designs

Water + children = fun! In our Dumbarton Propellor Workshop, test different hull designs in our mini experiment tank with its own wave making machine. Children can watch their boat progress down the tank with the help of the wave machine.  

Museum of Scottish Railways
Visitor route to the museum

Brass rubbing trail

Use crayons to make your own brass rubbings while discovering more about our site.

Scottish Maritime Museum
Irvine

Dingy Challenge

Interactive game where you must carefully steer the dinghy around the course. Watch you don't get seasick, the floor moves!

National Mining Museum Scotland

Crafting the Mine

Explore the Lady Victoria Colliey in Minecraft and mine for coal at the coalface!

New Lanark World Heritage Site

Clearburn Natural Play & Picnic Area Nature Trail

Located on the very same spot where Robert Owen's schoolchildren learned about nature, Clearburn is a haven for natural play, with living willow sculptures, a bug hotel and a bog garden. You can solve the clues to find the nature posts and complete the Clearburn Nature Trail.

National Mining Museum Scotland

Essential Engineering I Spy

Scottish Fisheries Museum

What a Midden!

Explore the museum's midden in order to discover what people ate thousands of years ago. 

Verdant Works

Bale mark interactive

Interactive that allows visitors to take brass rubbings of bale marks that would have once featured on jute bales. Follow the trail and collect them all!

Verdant Works

Smell interactive

Discover the variety of products that were once transported around the world in jute packaging by their smells.

Museum of Scottish Railways
Museum

Be a locomotive driver!

Find out about the levers and controls used to drive a steam locomotive.

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Wheelhouse equipment

Stand in the wheelhouse of an old fishing boat. Can you work out what all the equipment was used for? 

Almond Valley Heritage Trust

Style the pony's tail

Have a go at styling a pit pony’s tail! Get the pony looking lovely for the agricultural show.

Verdant Works

Harvest to Home game

Touch screen interactive game. Discover the journey of Jute! 

Scottish Maritime Museum
Irvine

Kids Interactive Play Area

In our Irvine Linthouse Building, there's a pirate ship where children can use items from the dressing-up box and become pirates, or for smaller children, there is a ballpool. Also close by is a boating pond who will interest all of us who are young at heart. You can use one of the readymade foam boats or purchase one to make yourself. 

Scottish Maritime Museum
Irvine

Puffer Challenge

Interactive game, where children can build their own puffer by selecting various options. At the end of the game, the puffer will steam across the screen, and give a score out of 10. Can you build the Puffer so that it sails from one end of the screen to the other?

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Build a Railway

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained, including having fun building your own railway. 

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Museum Worksheets

These will challenge you to hunt for hidden objects and answer fiendish questions as you make your way through the museum. 

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Steam power and life on board

Answer challenging questions and handle replica artefacts in order to discover what life was like on a steam drifter. 

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Test Your Strength

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained! You can test your strength on our pulleys interactive!

Scottish Maritime Museum
Irvine

Cargo Game

Move as many of the blocks from the loading area onto the ship, without the ship sinking below the surface of the water. 

Verdant Works

Mill Mouse Trail

Hunt for Mill Mouse while you learn and explore with the help of songs and activities.  

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Get knotting!

Find out how to tie useful knots such as a Sheet Bend or a Bowline.  

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Spinning Puzzle

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained, including dressing up our spinnign puzzle!

Museum of Scottish Railways
Museum building 1

Change the signals and points

Work out how to change the signals in order to safely move the railway points.

Almond Valley Heritage Trust

Build a firebrick archway

Build a firebrick archway! Learn about the science behind how to build an archway.

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Art Cart

Make origami boats, read exciting stories and complete other fun activities at the museum's Art Cart. 

Scottish Maritime Museum
Dumbarton

Smoothing and carving a real wax hull model

On our Dumbarton Scraping Platform, kids love getting involved in this practice of physically scraping the excess wax from the model hull and to shape it, thus making it more streamlined for the water. Exactly as what would have happened many years ago.

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Dress like a fisherman

Dress in the waterproof clothes of a modern fisherman. Will you be able to stay dry? 

National Mining Museum Scotland

Find the Colliery Cats

Find all 6 colliery cats around the museum and win a prize!

Verdant Works

Dress up station

Dress up as a mill worker or owner - who would you rather be? 

New Lanark World Heritage Site
Robert Owen's School for Children

Historic Classroom

Discover how children would have learned at New Lanark. Dress up in an 1820s uniform, write on a slate, play with old-fashioned toys and explore a giant globe.

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Fishermen's Bunk Beds

Discover what it was like to sleep on a nineteenth century fishing boat. 

Almond Valley Heritage Trust

Gavieside schoolroom

Come long and try your hand at writing on a slate and doing arithmetic! Have fun in the Gavieside schoolroom!

HMS Unicorn

Top Ten Trail Sheet

Our Top Ten Trail Sheet will help you and your crewmates to explore all four decks of HMS Unicorn and find out more about some of our historical treasures. 

National Mining Museum Scotland

Mining Mechanics Interactives

The interactive zone for older kids is a hands-on introduction to the science of coal mining.  There is also an art-cart and building blocks.

Scottish Maritime Museum
Irvine

Don’t Drop a Red Hot Rivet!

In our Irvine Linthouse Building, put on the welders mask, the riveter’s bunnet and pick up the riveting gun. Now, imagine holding it for 8 hours every day! Try and place the rivets into the slots using the gloves provided. Not as easy as it looks.

Discovery Point

Whale Interactive

Learn about filterers and biters and discover what a whale can see.

Discovery Point

Treasure Hunt and Quiz sheets

Tick box Treasure Hunt and Q&A Quiz Sheets to allow younger visitors to explore and engage with the exhibitions.

Exhibition Trail Sheet 1
Exhibition Trail Sheet 2 
Treasure Hunt 1
Treasure Hunt 2

Discovery Point

Fishing in Antarctica

Fish through the ice hole and discover what lives in the icy depths of Antarctica. 

Scottish Fisheries Museum

Try your hand at net-making

Learn how to make a fishing net. Can you make one strong enough to catch a fish? 

Almond Valley Heritage Trust

To viscosity and beyond!

To viscosity and beyond! Pump air through different types of oil to see which one is thickest.

Almond Valley Heritage Trust

Join the class

Join the class at Gavieside primary school! Get your picture taken and post it on social twitter @shalemuseum @goindustscot

Discovery Point

Load Up game

Using the crane, move the cargo onto the ship. Be sure to load evenly to avoid tipping the ship, good team work is required for this! 

Museum of Scottish Railways
Station

Visit the locomotive footplate

Visit the footplate of our working steam engine and find out how the coal makes steam.

Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life

Brick Masterpiece

There’s lots of hands on activities at Summerlee to keep the kids entertained, including creating your own brick masterpiece!

National Mining Museum Scotland

Victorian Dress Up

Experience Victorian Wash Day and try on Victorian costumes in our A Race Apart exhibition.

Recognised collections of national significance logo

Our collections are at the heart of what we do. They tell the stories of the people who served as the backbone to Scotland's industry.

Our museums are Accredited and hold collections Recognised as being of National Significance - except New Lanark, which is a World Heritage SIte.